Donald Trump Shooting: Security Failures, Lawsuits, and Second Attempt

The Trump Butler rally shooting took place on the evening of July 13, 2024, when 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks fired eight rounds from a rooftop about 450 feet from the stage at the Butler Farm Show grounds in Pennsylvania, grazing former President Donald Trump’s right ear, killing one spectator, and wounding two others before Secret Service counter-snipers killed him. Four separate investigations later concluded the attack was preventable, pointing to overlapping failures in Secret Service planning, communication, and resource decisions.

What Happened at the Rally

Trump was speaking at an outdoor campaign rally when the shots were fired. He dropped behind the podium, then rose with blood on his face and raised his fist to the crowd as agents escorted him off the stage, producing one of the defining images of the 2024 campaign.¹

Corey Comperatore, a 50-year-old engineer and volunteer fire chief from Sarver, Pennsylvania, was killed. Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro said Comperatore died shielding his wife and daughters.²³⁴

The Shooter and His Motive

Thomas Matthew Crooks was a 2022 graduate of Bethel Park High School. He had recently earned an associate degree in engineering science with high honors from the Community College of Allegheny County, was planning to enroll at Robert Morris University, and worked as a dietary aide at a local nursing home. He had no criminal record and was not previously known to the FBI.⁵

He used an AR-style 5.56-caliber rifle that his father had legally purchased roughly six months earlier, and he was a member of the Clairton Sportsmen’s Club. Investigators determined he reached the rooftop of a building in the American Glass Research complex by climbing on top of an air-conditioning unit rather than using a ladder he had purchased beforehand.⁶ He had visited the rally site in the days before the event, and searched his phone for images of both Trump and President Joe Biden as well as for symptoms of depressive disorder.⁷

In November 2025 the FBI concluded that Crooks acted alone and “without motive.” Agents found no political ideology, threatening language, or manifesto on his devices or in his home. FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino said there was “no cover-up,” though the bureau said it would continue to investigate credible leads.⁸ Crooks was a registered Republican who had also made a small donation to the Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue in 2021. Investigators described the absence of a clear political motivation as “unusual.”⁵

What the Investigations Found Went Wrong

A bipartisan House Task Force, a Senate Judiciary Committee inquiry, a Government Accountability Office audit, and an independent panel appointed by the Department of Homeland Security each concluded that the attack was preventable. Their findings overlapped in three main areas.

An Unsecured Rooftop in Plain Sight

The most glaring failure concerned the American Glass Research complex, a cluster of buildings with a direct line of sight to the stage just 450 feet away. The House Task Force found there was no clear guidance about which entity, the Secret Service or local law enforcement, was responsible for securing the area, resulting in coverage gaps. Local sniper teams believed they were not responsible for the area outside the Secret Service’s defined perimeter.⁹ The independent panel said this reflected a broader failure to conduct individualized risk assessments, with the agency relying on “formulaic” approaches rather than evaluating specific threats at specific sites.¹⁰

Communication Breakdowns

Local law enforcement spotted Crooks behaving suspiciously more than 90 minutes before the shooting, at approximately 4:26 p.m., but that information never reached the agents responsible for protecting Trump on the stage.¹¹ The Senate investigation identified the “greatest contributor” to the failures as a lack of structured communication. The Secret Service and local police operated from separate command posts, and the rally’s security room agent, assigned to the role just two days earlier, failed to relay intelligence about a suspicious individual with a range finder to agents guarding the stage.¹² The GAO found that many Secret Service officers experienced limited cell service at the rally, further degrading communication.¹³

Denied Resources and Siloed Intelligence

The Senate investigation found that the Secret Service had denied or left unfulfilled at least ten requests from Trump’s protective detail for additional resources, including counter-sniper teams, counter-assault personnel, and enhanced drone-detection systems. The agency had no formal process at the time for submitting, approving, or tracking such requests.¹²

The GAO also found that senior Secret Service officials had been briefed on a classified threat to Trump on July 3, 2024, ten days before the rally, but the information was never shared with the personnel developing the site’s security plan. Agency policy at the time did not require sharing classified threat intelligence unless it constituted an “imminent threat to life,” and classification barriers meant no lower-level version was distributed.¹⁴ The counter-drone detection system was also inoperable when Crooks flew a drone over the site at 3:51 p.m.¹¹

Accountability After Butler

Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned on July 23, 2024, ten days after the shooting, following bipartisan criticism during her testimony before the House Oversight Committee. In her resignation Cheatle called the shooting “the most significant operational failure at the Secret Service in decades” and said she took “full responsibility.”¹⁵ Deputy Director Ronald Rowe was named acting director,¹⁶ and Sean M. Curran became the 28th director on January 22, 2025.¹⁷

The Secret Service initiated disciplinary action against six individuals involved in the rally’s security, with suspensions ranging from 10 to 42 days without pay. All affected personnel were placed on restricted duty or moved to non-operational roles.¹⁸

Congress passed the Enhanced Presidential Security Act of 2024 (H.R. 9106), which Trump signed on October 1, 2024. The law requires the Secret Service to apply uniform standards when determining the number of agents assigned to protect presidents, vice presidents, and major presidential candidates, closing a gap that had allowed candidate details to receive fewer resources than sitting officeholders. The bill also mandated a comprehensive review of protective services and a report to Congress within 180 days. The House passed it 405 to 0.¹⁹

By the one-year anniversary in July 2025, the agency said it had implemented 21 of 46 recommendations from congressional oversight bodies, with 16 more in progress. Changes included the creation of an Aviation and Airspace Security division, updated guidance clarifying accountability at protective events, and improved procedures for intelligence sharing with local law enforcement.¹⁸ The independent review panel had called for deeper cultural change, describing the agency as “bureaucratic, complacent, and static” and recommending that outside leadership be brought in to address what it called a “corrosive” institutional attitude of “doing more with less.”¹⁰

Civil Lawsuits by the Wounded Spectators

David Dutch and James Copenhaver, the two spectators wounded at Butler, filed federal lawsuits against the United States alleging negligence by the Secret Service. Both men described their injuries as life-altering and said they face additional surgeries. Each is seeking at least $150,000 in damages; Copenhaver’s wife joined his suit citing economic losses and emotional anguish.²⁰⁴

A Second Attempt Two Months Later

The Butler shooting was not the only attempt on Trump’s life during the 2024 campaign. On September 15, 2024, a Secret Service agent clearing Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, one hole ahead of the former president, spotted a rifle barrel protruding through a chain-link fence near the sixth hole. The agent fired at the gunman, 58-year-old Ryan Wesley Routh, who had positioned himself roughly 126 feet from the green. Routh fled without firing a shot at Trump and was arrested on Interstate 95 after a civilian witness recorded his license plate.²¹²² A federal jury convicted Routh on all five counts after a trial in which he represented himself, and on February 4, 2026, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon sentenced him to life in prison plus 84 months.²³

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NPR. Ryan Routh Sentence, Assassination Attempt, Donald Trump